🎰 Yield-hungry investors circle Vegas
📉 Blackstone snaps up SF Four Seasons at record-low per-room pricing
🤑 Discount store retail continues quiet growth
💻 Webinars: Deep Dive on Student Housing (for accredited investors)
📚 Workshops: AI in Real Estate; How to Build & Fund Data Centers

Data Viz of the Week: Who is Leaving NYC… and Where Are They Going?

NYC's net domestic migration has long been negative, a pattern that has accelerated in the post-pandemic years. Here, Aziz Sunderji at Home Economics plots NYC's emigrants by income and destination, confirming the bias that older New Yorkers tend to flee to Florida while California is the preferred destination for high-income 30-somethings.

And Bridgeport, CT? We assume that means suburban Fairfield County (Bridgeport MSA), not Bridgeport proper.

NB: Net domestic migration is only so useful as a metric on its own, I explain why here

Upcoming Thesis Driven Courses & Classes

• 📣 LAST CALL - December 9-10: Workshop: AI in Real Estate (💻 Online): ​​A two-day interactive workshop for owners, operators, and developers exploring how to use AI in the real estate sector - Sign up 

•  📣 LAST CALL - December 11-12: Workshop: How to Build & Fund Data Centers (with Danny English) (💻 Online): A two-day interactive workshop designed for real estate investors, developers, and capital allocators who want to understand—and invest in—the data center asset class. - Sign up 

• December 16-17: Workshop: Real Estate Finance 101 (💻 Online): ​​A two-day interactive workshop designed for founders, operators, and professionals who want to finally understand how real estate finance actually works—and learn to speak the language of developers, investors, and property owners. - Sign up 

Three Articles We Loved from Last Week

It’s not easy keeping up with everything. Here are three articles we loved from the past week that you may have missed:

1. (Reuters) Realty Income backs $800mm preferred-equity deal on Las Vegas’s CityCenter

   Realty Income announced an $800 million perpetual preferred-equity investment in the high-profile CityCenter complex on the Las Vegas Strip—including the ARIA Resort & Casino and the Vdara Hotel & Spa, owned by funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate. The structure gives Blackstone the common equity while Realty Income secures a fixed return (~7.4 % initially, rising later) plus right of first offer on future equity sale. It underscores growing appetite from yield-focused investors to approach large hospitality and resort assets via structured capital rather than full ownership.

2. (SF Chronicle) Four Seasons San Francisco Sold to Blackstone in $130 Million Deal

   San Francisco’s landmark 277-room Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco at 757 Market Street has changed hands. The luxury property was acquired by Blackstone for roughly $130 million, which works out to about $470,000 per room. The sale marks Blackstone’s first hotel purchase in San Francisco in nearly a decade, and signals growing investor confidence in the city’s hotel market.

3. (WSJ) Retailers Are Snatching Up Real Estate Again

   In a surprising reversal, Q3 2025 saw U.S. retailers absorb 5.5 million more square feet than they vacated—a sharp change from earlier in the year when store closures and bankruptcies dominated. Discount and value-oriented chains such as Dollar General, Aldi, and 7‑Eleven are leading the rebound, scooping up leases vacated by shuttered peers. At the same time, retail development remains minimal and national vacancy rates are tight (around 4.3%), underscoring a structural tilt in favor of standing assets rather than speculative new builds.

4. (The Real Deal) Hudson Pacific posts $136.5mm loss amid studio pain

   West-Coast REIT Hudson Pacific Properties reported a $136.5 million Q3 loss, driven largely by poor studio-asset performance in L.A. However, strong office leasing activity in the Bay Area — including new AI-tenant deals — points to a bifurcated picture: studios shaky, but office demand possibly rebounding.

5. (JLL) Global Real Estate Perspective, November 2025

   According to recent global data from one of the world’s leading real-estate services firms, demand is rising for industrial and logistics assets, retail is showing resilience, and office leasing globally is at its strongest in six years — even as regional variation remains wide.

Developer of the Week: McCarthy Companies

More BTR is coming to Austin.

McCarthy Companies completed Twelve Oaks, a 218-unit build-to-rent development on 20.7 acres in Liberty Hill outside of Austin. The project was developed with Montgomery Street Partners, New Growth Living, and BlackRock Realty Advisors. 

The community consists of single-family-style rental homes, each with a private yard and garage. On-site amenities include a pool, clubhouse, fitness center, barbeque areas, and distributed green space. McCarthy Companies described the project as an example of its capacity to deliver large-scale residential communities intended to serve both residents and institutional investors.

You can read more about McCarthy Companies on the Thesis Driven GP database here.

Know about a developer doing something cool? Reach out to [email protected] with the tip!

Investor of the Week: a16z Perennial

a16z Perennial is the investment and advisory platform launched by Andreessen Horowitz in 2023 to manage capital for exited founders, entrepreneurs, HNWIs, and select institutions—bringing the firm’s innovation-first DNA into a long-term, multi-asset investment mandate. Led by CIO Michel Del Buono, Perennial allocates across public equities, venture, private equity, real estate, real-asset credit, and other alternatives, operating through an evergreen fund structure designed to compound capital over decades.

Within real assets, Perennial is building a selective program that blends early-stage capital, thematic venture alignment, and opportunistic real-estate exposure. The team explores innovative housing models, fintech-proptech convergence, and new operating platforms, and can write $5–10 million “first checks” to catalyze novel real-estate strategies or asset acquisitions. They also focus on creative debt and tax-advantaged structures, and seek opportunities where technology, operating sophistication, and structural complexity create long-duration edge.

Their goal is to assemble a portfolio of durable, innovation-linked real assets that can outperform across cycles and complement the evergreen nature of the Perennial platform. They consistently look for managers and operators who blend creativity with institutional execution, and who can leverage technology or structural insight to unlock differentiated returns.

Get more details on a16z Perennial, including team contacts, deal activity, and investment preferences, inside the CapitalStack database.

—Brad and Paul